cannabisnews.com: Drug Charges Dropped Against Young Martorano! 





Drug Charges Dropped Against Young Martorano! 
Posted by FoM on January 20, 1999 at 05:41:35 PT

A federal judge yesterday dismissed drug-conspiracy charges against the grandson and namesake of convicted mobster-drug dealer Raymond "Long John" Martorano, ruling that prosecutors failed to prove the younger Martorano knew that hundreds of pounds of packages he helped move contained Marijuana.
A judge ruled that he did not necessarily know that crates he helped move contained Marijuana. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody came after a nonjury trial last week in which prosecutors alleged that Raymond Martorano, 23, of Cherry Hill, had conspired with restaurateur John Gaeta, 36, of South Philadelphia, to import more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana from Houston to Philadelphia and Newark, N.J., using a commercial shipping company.Federal agents watched the two men April 29 as they picked up two large crates from Philadelphia International Airport and drove them to a garage in the 700 block of Perth Street in South Philadelphia.Both men were arrested before they unloaded or opened the crates, and Martorano immediately maintained his innocence, saying he did not know what was inside.Martorano's lawyer, Joseph C. Santaguida, noted that Martorano had no prior arrests despite family ties to two of the city's most notorious mobsters -- grandfather Raymond and father George "Cowboy" Martorano -- and that both the truck and the garage were regis tered to Gaeta.Raymond "Long John" Martorano is serving a life term for the 1980 murder of Roofers Union boss John McCullough; George Martorano, a convicted drug dealer, has been serving a life sentence since 1984.The young Martorano, who did not testify in his own defense, could not be reached for comment yesterday. Santaguida said Martorano, who has used the name Raymond Lafferty in an attempt to escape his family's notoriety, planned to resume work at a South Jersey construction company. He had been free on a $10,000 bond since his arrest. Martorano's case was helped by Gaeta, who pleaded guilty to the charges and chose a no-parole, 6 -year prison term rather than cooperate with prosecutors and testify against Martorano and others.Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Foulkes said Martorano's defense was also helped by an October decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit clarifying the proof needed for conviction on a charge of criminal conspiracy.Ruling 2-1 in U.S. v. Ismoila Idowu, a case out of Jersey City, the appeals court reversed the conviction of an alleged participant in a Pakistani heroin conspiracy. Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Edward R. Becker wrote that "even in situations where the defendant knew that he was engaged in illicit activity, and knew that 'some form of contraband' was involved in the scheme in which he was participating, the government is obliged to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had knowledge of the particular illegal objective contemplated by the conspiracy.""This has always been the law," said Santaguida. "But there's no question that the Third Circuit has made it a lot clearer that the government has to prove knowledge of a specific illegal activity."Even before Martorano's trial, the Idowu ruling was cited by lawyers for Alexander Kopeykin, 34, of Bustleton, a jeweler and electronics retailer arrested last month after federal agents allegedly watched him and a co-defendant unloading boxes from a truck later found to contain 1,600 pounds of marijuana and $1 million in cash.Kopeykin's lawyers have argued that he did not know what was in the boxes and that the truck had been leased by co-defendant Alexander Cherkas, 23, of Northeast Philadelphia, and driven to Philadelphia by two Arizona men. Kopeykin, Cherkas, and one of the Arizona men remain free on bail pending trial.
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